April 10, 2009 (IDG News Service) Microsoft Corp. is downsizing its Internet-focused Live Labs research group by reassigning about half of the operation's employees to work within product groups at the company.
The goal of the restructuring move is to increase the likelihood that Microsoft's investments in research will actually translate into shipping products, company spokeswoman Stacy Drake said yesterday. Moving the Live Labs researchers into product groups will allow them to contribute directly to development projects, Drake said.
In addition, she acknowledged that "economic conditions do play a role" in the changes. Microsoft said in January that it planned to lay off up to 5,000 workers over the next 18 months because of the recession and a drop-off in profits, although the cuts are expected to be partially offset by the addition of 2,000 to 3,000 new employees in different positions.
Drake wouldn't say how many people have been working in the Live Labs group. The employees who remain there will focus broadly on research related to Web user experiences, including navigation, exploration, information discovery and retrieval, and approaches for organizing data, she said.
Live Labs was launched in early 2006 as a partnership between the software vendor's MSN and Microsoft Research units under the direction of Gary Flake, who will continue to lead what remains of the group. Flake came to Microsoft from Yahoo Inc., where he ran that company's research labs.
Researchers at Live Labs developed and launched Photosynth, a technology that can stitch together hundreds of photographs into a single 3-D image that viewers can navigate around. They also developed Seadragon, another photo application that lets users zoom in and out when viewing large images online; an iPhone version of that application, called Seadragon Mobile, was released in December.
Perhaps in anticipation of the organizational changes, a high-profile member of the Live Labs team left Microsoft recently. Don Lindsay, formerly a Live Labs design director, appears to have taken a job as vice president of user experience at BlackBerry developer Research In Motion Ltd., according to his LinkedIn profile and a story posted by the MocoNews Web site. Lindsay worked at Apple Inc. before joining Microsoft.
Microsoft often promotes the importance of its research efforts. "Research is really critical to the company," Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, said in February at the vendor's annual TechFest event, where its researchers show off their latest inventions.
Companies that cut research spending in response to short-term pressures, or that never do pure research, don't tend to thrive for very long, Mundie added. "My belief is the company would struggle to survive and prosper if we didn't have research investments," he said.
The goal of the restructuring move is to increase the likelihood that Microsoft's investments in research will actually translate into shipping products, company spokeswoman Stacy Drake said yesterday. Moving the Live Labs researchers into product groups will allow them to contribute directly to development projects, Drake said.
In addition, she acknowledged that "economic conditions do play a role" in the changes. Microsoft said in January that it planned to lay off up to 5,000 workers over the next 18 months because of the recession and a drop-off in profits, although the cuts are expected to be partially offset by the addition of 2,000 to 3,000 new employees in different positions.
Drake wouldn't say how many people have been working in the Live Labs group. The employees who remain there will focus broadly on research related to Web user experiences, including navigation, exploration, information discovery and retrieval, and approaches for organizing data, she said.
Live Labs was launched in early 2006 as a partnership between the software vendor's MSN and Microsoft Research units under the direction of Gary Flake, who will continue to lead what remains of the group. Flake came to Microsoft from Yahoo Inc., where he ran that company's research labs.
Researchers at Live Labs developed and launched Photosynth, a technology that can stitch together hundreds of photographs into a single 3-D image that viewers can navigate around. They also developed Seadragon, another photo application that lets users zoom in and out when viewing large images online; an iPhone version of that application, called Seadragon Mobile, was released in December.
Perhaps in anticipation of the organizational changes, a high-profile member of the Live Labs team left Microsoft recently. Don Lindsay, formerly a Live Labs design director, appears to have taken a job as vice president of user experience at BlackBerry developer Research In Motion Ltd., according to his LinkedIn profile and a story posted by the MocoNews Web site. Lindsay worked at Apple Inc. before joining Microsoft.
Microsoft often promotes the importance of its research efforts. "Research is really critical to the company," Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, said in February at the vendor's annual TechFest event, where its researchers show off their latest inventions.
Companies that cut research spending in response to short-term pressures, or that never do pure research, don't tend to thrive for very long, Mundie added. "My belief is the company would struggle to survive and prosper if we didn't have research investments," he said.
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